Burned with the Garbage
Save LivesAny and all information relevant to abuses or human rights violations reported in this article should be sent to Freedom to forward its ongoing investigation. If you have other data regarding psychiatric experiments upon children, or the use of violent or coercive psychiatric methods against them, Freedom also wants to hear from you. Send full information in writing to Freedom Magazine, 6331 Hollywood Blvd., Suite 1200, Los Angeles, CA 90028. E-mail editor@freedommag.org, call (323) 960-3500, or click here to Freedom Investigations |
Joseph Martin was 5 1/2 years old in 1938 when his parents, promised he would receive a good education, placed him in Montreal’s Buisonnet Institute. Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to St. Jean de Dieu, where he remained until 1956.
Upon his arrival at St. Jean de Dieu, Martin said, he and other young people were stripped of personal belongings, including jewelry, clothing, pictures of cherished relatives, money and identification.
Martin, today a Montreal cabinetmaker, readily recounts stories of abuse. He said that in 1941, he witnessed a 10-year-old boy beaten to death by two guards. Incredibly, said Martin, many of the guards hired to watch over the children were young criminals who had been in reform schools. And many guards — some of whom he named — allegedly sodomized the youths.
When Martin, after being assaulted repeatedly, complained to hospital authorities, he received the ultimate “warning.” The culprits drove a knife into his left eye, blinding him, and told him that if he complained again, he would also lose the right eye.
For years, according to Martin, three children each week were victims of operations during which vital organs such as hearts, lungs, kidneys and livers were cut out and sold in the U.S. A gray-and-black refrigerated vehicle transported the organs, he said.
Carol Rutz noted, “Their organs could be harvested and sold and no one would be the wiser. They were the expendables simply because they were available."
What remained of the bodies, said Martin, would be buried in cardboard boxes, three children per box, in what was known as the “pigsty” cemetery — so named because it was where pigs were kept, and where the remains of dead swine and other animals were also disposed of.
But not all children were buried. In the early 1950s at St. Jean de Dieu, Martin said, he saw hospital staff carrying the dead bodies of children as young as 5 to a large incinerator, where they were thrown in with the hospital’s garbage.
The youngest children, Martin charged, were kept out of sight in cells and cages at the back of St. Jean de Dieu under barbaric conditions — in straitjackets, heavily drugged and befouled by their own waste.
Powerlessness
Like other Orphans interviewed, Jean-Guy Labrosse has painful memories. One includes the feeling of utter powerlessness. While incarcerated at St. Michel Archange, for example, Labrosse said he was told by psychiatrist Jean-Yves Gosselin that he held all the cards to the fate of the children.
"Once you come in here, we are the ones who decide when you may be liberated," Gosselin allegedly told Labrosse.
When contacted by Freedom, Gosselin, who served as president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association in 1993, said he wouldn’t comment on Labrosse’s allegation. Currently practicing in Ottawa, Gosselin said he couldn’t remember whether he had treated Duplessis Orphans or not.
But he admitted that during his tenure as staff psychiatrist at St. Michel Archange from 1959 to 1963, he had placed a number of patients on farms. Of note, according to former Quebec Ombudsman Daniel Jacoby and reports received by Freedom, Orphans placed on farms were also victimized.
Beatings, Torture, Sodomy
Freedom contacted psychiatrist Denis Lazure for response to allegations by Joseph Martin and others regarding abuses at St. Jean de Dieu. In addition to interning at the institution in 1952, Lazure served as its director from 1974 to 1976. In 2000, he returned to the renamed facility, Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, as a practicing psychiatrist.
According to a statement provided on Lazure’s behalf by Jean Lepage, public relations director for Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine, investigations into claims that Orphans had been severely harmed “were never proven and therefore considered unfounded.”
Lepage referred to a 1997 report by the then Quebec ombudsman, Daniel Jacoby, in which the Orphans’ complaints were documented.
Jacoby’s report, however, does not state that the Orphans’ statements of abuse were unfounded. He did indeed find evidence of such abuses as psychosurgery, electroshock, ice baths, beatings, straitjacketing, torture, sodomy and “unjustified confinement to a cell — sometimes for months or even years.”13
In fact, after the Quebec attorney general announced in February 1995 that no charges would be brought, Jacoby stated, “in almost all cases, the reasons invoked by the attorney general did nothing to deny the existence of the facts. Neither the statute of limitations nor the death of a suspect or complainant throw the alleged acts into question.”14
Rejecting Lazure’s response to Freedom as “a pack of lies,” Rod Vienneau pointed to the psychiatrist’s own memoirs for corroboration of abuses. “I believe Denis Lazure should be the first one to be brought to court” for crimes against innocent children, Vienneau said.
Specific allegations by Vienneau and others, most importantly, have never been investigated by authorities empowered to bring perpetrators to justice. With no proper investigation, Vienneau said, one cannot say claims are “unfounded,” particularly in the presence of eyewitnesses and other evidence.
“They Became Vegetables”
Experiments were not limited to any one institution such as St. Jean de Dieu. Neurosurgeon Guy LaMarche, for example, admitted that in the 1950s, each Wednesday, two or three lobotomies were performed on patients at St. Michel Archange, as prescribed by the institution’s head psychiatrist, even though “we had no idea” how the operations would affect the institution’s patients. “More often than not, they became vegetables,” LaMarche said.15
An official probe can determine how many of the victims may have been Orphans, said CCHR’s Denis Coté. “This dark chapter in Canada’s history needs to be aired for all to see in a series of hearings,” he said. “I believe it would be best for an independent public inquiry to examine this.”
In its own investigation, Freedom found what appears to be an ongoing campaign of deception and disinformation designed to derail any examination of criminal acts or other misconduct against the Orphans by psychiatrists and others, and to keep those crimes covered up.
Orphans seeking justice, for example, have reported threats and assaults. Joseph Martin said he was visited at his home by four men who refused to identify themselves but warned him to “shut up.” This occurred a few days after Freedom had contacted Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine Hospital for comment regarding allegations by Martin and others.
As part of any official investigation, witnesses and their families must be safeguarded.
